


games

by aibari



Series: this is how it works [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Apocalypse, Blind Character, Card Games, Chess, F/F, The Magnus Archives Femslash Week, spoilers up to MAG160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22051669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aibari/pseuds/aibari
Summary: When Melanie goes blind, they get a cheap pack of cards from Tesco and cut shapes out of each of them so they're recognisable by feel. Georgie puts on a blindfold and they sit down cross-legged on the floor, awkwardly playing bridge and poker by touch as the Admiral climbs all over them. The cards are waxy plastic under Melanie's fingers, and learning to recognise the different suits with their numbers by feel is an accomplishment, even when many other things are hard. It feels like moving forward, just a little bit.Melanie adjusts. Or: Two games Melanie and Georgie play after Melanie quits the institute.For day three of the Magnus Archives Femslash Week 2019.5: Game Night.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Series: this is how it works [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586131
Comments: 18
Kudos: 78
Collections: The Magnus Archives Femslash Week 2019.5





	games

  1. cards




When Melanie goes blind, they get a cheap pack of cards from Tesco and cut shapes out of each of them so they're recognisable by feel. Georgie puts on a blindfold and they sit down cross-legged on the floor, awkwardly playing bridge and poker by touch as the Admiral climbs all over them. The cards are waxy plastic under Melanie's fingers, and learning to recognise the different suits with their numbers by feel is an accomplishment, even when many other things are hard. It feels like moving forward, just a little bit.

They memorise shapes and practice their poker faces, their poker voices. Melanie was good at it before, but she thinks she's getting better at it, keeping her voice casually smug when she plays a bad hand. Georgie, on the other hand, is good at calling her bluff, but _terrible_ at lying herself; she always sounds self-conscious, like she's reading something embarrassing from a note of paper.

“How do you always _know_?” she whines, after Melanie calls her on three bluffs in a row.

“Maybe you just can't lie for shit,” Melanie says, with a shit-eating grin.

“I can lie! I've lied before,” Georgie says, mock-affronted.

“Yeah, but was it successful, though?”

“That's – _look_ – ” Georgie sputters, and Melanie can't help herself. She crawls over the cards on the floor to where Georgie's voice is, and then reaches out and kisses her. They fall backwards, narrowly avoiding the Admiral, who gives an annoyed little squeak before sprinting horse-like down the hallway. Georgie laughs into her mouth.

“Oh no,” she says. “Oh, Admiral – ”

“He's fine,” Melanie says, and kisses her again, and keeps kissing her until they're both short of breath. Georgie tucks a strand of Melanie's hair behind her ear. Melanie's pretty sure it had been in her mouth. One of their mouths. Maybe both.

“Hey,” says Georgie, all soft and tender. Melanie may not be able to see, but she can still feel the sunlight on her skin, Georgie's pulse in the spot under her jaw, beating just a little fast.

“Hey,” Melanie says. She kisses her again, just a fraction off, hitting Georgie's cheek. She smiles. “Maybe it's because I know you.”

Georgie laughs.

“You do,” she says. “You do.”

  1. chess




Georgie picks up a beat-up old chess from the Oxfam down the street. The board is made of wood, the squares scored deep into the grain. One of the corners is a bit chipped. When Melanie touches the surface of it, she can feel the spots where the paint is starting to flake off.

The pieces are more solid, carved from a harder wood. They feel worn with use between her fingers, like someone has used them enough to sand them down to a softer smoothness than she'd expect of a set like this.

Melanie can't play chess to save her life, but handling the pieces feels _grounding_ in a way that is unexpected but welcome. They play together, and it's slow going at first; Melanie is still working on remembering how the board is set up and how to tell the different pieces apart. Georgie patiently describes the board to her, and when she needs to move her hand more to hit the right pawn.

With anyone else, it would have been frustrating. _Humiliating,_ too. Here, sitting in Georgie's flat in the evening with the chess board between them, it feels like a challenge. Like it's a game they are playing together on top of the actual game, where the goal is good memory and effective communication. Georgie wins more chess, but it doesn't feel like they're playing against each other, not really.

Melanie learns how to play. She is good at pattern recognition, and suddenly, slowly, the patterns of the game shift and rearrange themselves into something that makes sense. The _chess_ becomes fun, not just the scene for an very low-stakes game of _Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes._ A game in its own right. She doesn't win a lot, but sometimes she _does_ win. Every time the logic of the game makes a bit more sense, and Georgie needs smaller and smaller cues to direct Melanie toward the right spaces on the board.

It feels really, really nice.

-

They're playing chess when the world ends. Melanie has her fingers clutched around the head of a pawn, hand in mid-air, when it happens. The window is open in a crack, letting in the firewood air of autumn, and the Admiral lies like a warm puddle in her lap, boneless, purring.

The apocalypse rolls over them like a change in pressure. The air becomes heavy, clammy and headachey in the way it gets before a storm. The temperature drops; Melanie drops the pawn, which hits … some of the other pieces ( _knight_ , Melanie thinks, and, _queen,)_ fall over when it hits them on the way down. The Admiral stiffens up and does not move, digging his claws into her thighs.

Outside, faint at first and then louder, people begin to scream.

“What's going on?” Melanie asks, so tense she can practically feel herself vibrating. She hears Georgie get up and stumble to the window, and then the window closing, latch clicking into place.

“There's … it's bad,” Georgie says. “Something is really wrong.”

“What?” Melanie says, rising to her feet. Reluctantly, the Admiral jumps down, meowing plaintively. She bends to pick him up, and now his claws are digging into her shoulder instead of her leg. He's warm and soft in her arms, and that, at least, is reassuring. She murmurs, “Yes, okay, I've got you.”

Carefully, she steps around the chess set toward Georgie and the window.

“The sky,” Georgie says, voice flat with disbelief, “is looking at us.”

“What, metaphorically?” Melanie asks, though she has a horrible, rising suspicion.

“No, with just … a _lot_ of eyes.”

“Oh, good,” Melanie says faintly. “Great.”

“It looks like it might be some kind of … apocalypse?”

“Well,” Melanie says. She feels very far away from herself, and surprised at how _not_ surprised she is. “That's a lot.”

Georgie laughs, a little wildly. “Yeah.”

“I – I think once this has had the time to sink in it's going to be terrifying,” Melanie says, “but I'm not there yet, so why don't we make some tea and then try to figure out what to do from here?”

“Yeah,” Georgie says again. She puts on the kettle. Melanie goes to fill the bathtub with water for later, just in case. Then they sit down on the floor and drink their tea and eat some biscuits. They talk a bit, and cry a bit, and do some quick adjustments to the flat. Just in case.

Then, because it might be the apocalypse, but it doesn't seem to be an “everyone dies immediately” kind of thing, they put it aside for a little while.

They play chess.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://aibari.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/aibari)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] games](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684657) by [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/pseuds/carboncopies)




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